


your hand in mine

by pyrrhlc



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 1950s England, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Kiss, Light Angst, M/M, Mechanic Feuilly, Teddy Boy Bahorel, inspired by danny the champion of the world, some period-typical racism/homophobia but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/pseuds/pyrrhlc
Summary: The year is 1959, and Thénardier’s pheasants are ripe for the poaching.





	your hand in mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [witticaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witticaster/gifts).



> For the marvellous [Bri](http://paladinical.tumblr.com/). Happy birthday! I hope you like this. <3
> 
> Unfortunately, this is an unabashedly British fic. Some rough context and a glossary can be found in the end notes.
> 
> Additional context: Bahorel is South Asian (specifically Indian second-gen) and Feuilly is third-gen Hispanic.

 “Hey! Feuilly!”

Feuilly slid himself out from underneath the car he’d been working on and glanced sideways to look at the shoes that were accosting him: a pair of old, dirty white trainers, the colour of the laces barely discernable and unravelling at the edges. The socks attached to these trainers, somehow, never seemed to match: today they were navy and yellow, right foot and left foot respectively, and Feuilly knew without another glance that they belonged to the body of Grantaire.

He glanced up into his friend’s grinning face. Grantaire always smiled like he had nothing better to do, and in a way Feuilly supposed that he hadn’t. He smiled wearily back.

“Hi R,” he said, standing up and grabbing a rag from one of the nearby workbenches, trying to get the grease off his hands, to no avail. He was always more-or-less covered in grease and petrol stains from the workshop – it was the way things had always been. “What’s up?”

Grantaire was never much tidier than Feuilly – this was one of the reasons they made such good friends. Apart from his odd socks, Grantaire was constantly in the habit of forgetting to brush his hair (curly, wild – chaotic, like Grantaire) and tended to wear the same dog-eared black-tan blazer over and over again, making him look dangerously close to some sort of Teddy Boy. It was falling apart at the seams, but no one, including Grantaire’s mother, had yet managed to make him part from it. It was as much a part of Grantaire as the grease and petrol of the workshop were a part of Feuilly. Messy, and unscrupulous in the schoolmaster’s eyes, but a part of them nonetheless. The fact that the jacket had belonged to Grantaire’s absent father probably said more about it than anything, Feuilly thought.

He put down the rag and angled his head towards the half-open door of the workshop, trying to seek out the tall, stooped figure of his father, but there was no one in sight. Just the filling-station, and the field, and the caravan upon the field. Just home, in other words. He turned back to Grantaire.

“Your dad said I could come in,” Grantaire told him, leaning forward to inspect the rusty heap Feuilly had been faithfully working on for the last six or so months. “Said you’d got the car to work, finally.”

Feuilly took an appraising glance at the car in question. It was a dark red Ford Consul, and it was partly the love of his life, but apart from being able to run its engine it didn’t look like much. Feuilly had yet to find a new bumper that was worthy of the dusty red Consul.

“Can we ride it?” Grantaire asked him, a faint edge of longing in his voice. Feuilly gave him an amused look.

“It’s not a horse.” he said. “You can’t _mount_ it.”

“But can you _drive_ the car?”

“I don’t have a license.” Feuilly replied, deadpan. Grantaire cocked an eyebrow at him.

“That was not the question,” Grantaire quipped back. His grinned again.“I have my provisional. We could at least _try_ and drive it.”

“It doesn’t have a license plate, either,” argued Feuilly back. “Or a bumper, or a proper steering mechanism. You’ll just have to wait.” Not that he didn’t want to drive the car too, Feuilly thought. He’d been wanting to drive this particular Ford Consul ever since he rescued it from the junk yard five years ago. So far, without making much progress. But a working engine was a sort of progress, he reminded himself. This was the car that would get him out of here – of that Feuilly was certain.

Grantaire sat himself down on the nearby workbench, clearly disappointed. “I wish you would be less sensible,” he complained, “I would never wreck your precious beloved, you know. It wouldn’t even get scratched.”

“It’s already scratched,” Feuilly shot back out of habit, “And those hedges would mess it up, anyway. Too close together. You don’t notice it when you’re on your bike.”

Grantaire shrugged. “Agatha is _the_ supreme method of transport,” he said, referring to his bicycle by the inane name he had bestowed upon it after receiving it as a birthday present two or so years ago, “You’re just jealous.”

“I’m not jealous; I’m patient.” he replied, and picked up the rag again, trying to scrub away the grease that had lodged itself beneath his fingernails. It was just a distraction, really – a way of getting Grantaire to change the topic, which he wasn’t particularly fond of doing – and after a few moments more it seemed to work; Grantaire stood up off the bench, hands in his pockets as he watched Feuilly fight against the intensity of his love for the Consul by scrubbing at the dirt there, and said at length, “Did you hear about the new guy Sai’s got working for him? I bumped into him the other day; he’s massive. Twice the size of scrawny old you.”

Sai, Feuilly knew from experience, was the village’s local greengrocer – a bit of a trek away from the filling station and its workshop and the old caravan, but Sai always brought his Comma van to Feuilly and his father if it needed repairs or an extra gallon of petrol, and Feuilly had never felt ungrateful for his service. He was nice – if a little liver-spotted and deaf in one ear. Feuilly’s father had always spoken warmly of him.

He wasn’t often in the habit of hiring help, though. This new fact Feuilly found particular interesting. He threw the cloth onto the wind shield of the Consul. “Who’s he got?” he asked. Grantaire’s twinkling eyes grew just a little brighter at the question.

“Someone new – from London, I think. His name’s Bahorel. Asked me if I knew where the nearest filling-station was on my way out – I think he’s got a car of his own. Imagine that! Nineteen and a car of your own. It makes me weep.”

Feuilly flung open the doors to the workshop; Grantaire’s black-tan blazer tended to make things stuffy after a while, and Feuilly had never liked artificial light. The paraffin lamps of the caravan were much more satisfying. He sat down on the front steps of the workshop, Grantaire following him quickly after.

“He probably has a van, if anything,” Feuilly told him, partly out of truth, and partly to try and quell the jealousy welling up in his own stomach. He resisted the urge to look back at the Consul, lying dormant in the workshop’s shadows, its rusted parts slowly advancing into retirement with every move Feuilly failed to make. “Is he friendly?”

“Friendly enough,” Grantaire replied, looking at Feuilly with a curious expression, just for a moment. It was tucked away again just as quickly. “Fucking huge though. Probably why Sai hired him. I wish Sai could’ve hired _me_ ,” he added, popping in the usual complaint. Feuilly, because he was used to such complaints, ignored him, which turned out to be the best course of action.

“It could be worse,” he said to him. “You could be a butcher’s boy. Better to be covered in flour than meat and gristle.”

Grantaire patted the pockets of his black-tan blazer thoughtfully, as if trying to imagine an alternative fate. He’d been working as Mr Miller’s assistant in the bakery ever since the two of them had left school – a quaint enough fate, bar the dozen or so times a day when Grantaire was most likely to meet the _actual_ butcher boy, Enjolras, on his rounds delivering loaves and pastries to the general public. Grantaire had quite a lot to say on the subject of Enjolras, but Feuilly wasn’t entirely certain he meant any of it – if, of course, Grantaire ever meant anything at all.

“He keeps glaring at me,” Grantaire said, predictably at usual. It was useless to confirm just who _he_ was. Most of their conversations tended to end up this way eventually; the best course of action, Feuilly had found, in any case, was simply to listen. Grantaire continued, “I popped in to buy oak cakes for Ma the other day, and there he was, staring daggers. Say, do you think I should start wearing matching socks?”

“You’ve never worn matching socks in your life,” Feuilly replied absently. He allowed his gaze to wander for a moment across the field, studying the dark yellow grass, the bright blue skyline – all of it unrelenting in the midst of this summer heat. Tendrils of warmth shivered on the horizon. To Feuilly, it almost looked like a mirage. A sudden thought occurred to him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in work _now_?” he asked Grantaire. Grantaire’s blazer shrugged; somehow, Feuilly doubted that a pair of matching socks would be enough to soothe Enjolras’ general distaste of him. As far as he could tell, Enjolras _hated_ mess – and the dispassionate to boot. And Grantaire was so obviously both of those things. Not that it bothered Feuilly.

“Aren’t _you_ supposed to be running the filling-station?” Grantaire retorted, then relaxed; he tugged carelessly at his tangled hair, standing up from the step and brushing down his trousers. “You’re right. I’ll head off now. But you better come into the village and see me sometime! Persuade your dad to give you a ha’penny or something.”

He reached down to pull Agatha up from the long yellow grass – Feuilly hadn’t even noticed the bike until that moment – and mounted it quickly, turning back to grin at Feuilly as he pushed off in the direction of the narrow country lane.

“Remember, bring a ha’penny!” he called, plumes of dust rising up from beneath the wheels as he rode away, “Don’t forget!”

*

It was some days later that Feuilly decided to heed Grantaire’s instructions and meander into the village. He was halfway along the narrow lane when he heard a shuffling noise on the other side of the hedge. He stopped in his tracks.

“Hello?” he called. To all appearances, the area around him was completely deserted; cars never came this way unless they were headed down into London or on their way to the filling-station. But the noise on the other side of the hedge didn’t sound like a car. He called out again.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

“Just me,” said a voice from the other side of the hedge. Feuilly started a little, then frowned as a tall, broad-shouldered boy no more than a couple of years older than himself stopped low to slide beneath the hedge’s tangled branches. Somehow, he knew immediately that he was the Bahorel Grantaire had mentioned. His stomach twisted.

Grantaire hadn’t mentioned the Brylcreemed quiff and the beetle-crushers, or those ridiculous drainpipe trousers. He hadn’t mentioned that Bahorel was completely, unfairly attractive.

No, of course he hadn’t. Damn Grantaire, honestly.

Bahorel – enormously tall, as promised – reached down almost sheepishly to brush off the leaves still clinging to his jacket. His smile could’ve been measured in kilowatts. “Sorry for startling you,” he said, inclining his head. He held out his hand with another careless grin. “Bahorel. Just got back from checking out Thénardier’s wood.”

Feuilly blinked, leaving Bahorel’s tanned brown hand hanging in the air. “Thénardier’s wood? But that’s—sorry,” he said, correcting himself, “I’m Feuilly. I work for my dad at the filling station. Were you out _poaching_?”

Another easy grin. “Not yet. But soon, I reckon.”

“You’ll get caught!” The words were out of his mouth before he could even stop them. “Everyone gets caught! Thénardier’s got a man around every tree.”

Bahorel leaned back against the hedge, carefully adjusting his blazer as he did so. Feuilly was more than slightly fascinated by his eccentric appearance.

“I’ll be careful,” he said. “I’m always careful.” He took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and casually offered one to Feuilly. “You smoke?” Feuilly felt a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Some grocer’s boy.

“Maybe,” he said, taking the cigarette from him, more than a little self-conscious of his petrol-stained hands. He held his breath as Bahorel reached out with a lighter. Two tendrils of grey smoke rose up in lazy parallels into the air. There was silence for a moment, then:

“Walk with me? Didn’t take the car this far; didn’t want that old bastard to see me snooping. It’s parked right at the edge of the village.”

Feuilly took a few tentative steps after him as he began to walk up the lane. He wasn’t sure why the news surprised him; Grantaire had guessed as much, after all. He asked: “You have a car? Not a van?” Bahorel turned back to smile at him, dragging on his cigarette.

“Sure do. Buick Skylark. Falling apart in places, but she runs okay.” He grinned at Feuilly’s open mouth. “You okay there?”

“That’s an _American_ car. A goddam _Buick_. How did you even get your hands on it?”

Bahorel breathed out a cloud of cigarette smoke, flicking the ash onto the ground with a well practised flick. Feuilly’s own remained burning in his fingers. “Bit of luck, bit of this and that,” Bahorel said. He raised his eyebrows, looking back at Feuilly as if taking him in fully for the first time. “There aren’t many who can handle a Buick.”

“There’s a Ford Consul in our workshop,” Feuilly said, almost without meaning to. He almost wanted to bite back the words – but Bahorel leaned forward with interest, lighting up another cigarette as they continued their long, meandering walk up the street.

“At the filling station? I’ve been meaning to go there.” he mused, breathing in the smoke. Feuilly tentatively copied the gesture. He’d smoked with Grantaire before, but only briefly – cigarettes were expensive things in a village with a single filling-station and only a handful of cars. Bahorel’s eyes locked briefly with his. “You any good at fixing ‘em?”

Feuilly’s cheeks heated. “It’s taken a good six months to get the Consul working, but that was left pretty much to the scrapheap. All rusted on the inside.” He nodded decisively, the smile from earlier suddenly uncontrollable. “I’m good with cars.”

“Good enough for my Skylark?” Bahorel asked him, raising an eyebrow. Feuilly dropped the cigarette onto the ground, making sure to grind it carefully into the dirt. He looked up at Bahorel.

“Yeah,” he said, “Good enough.”

*

“So then,” he said, another fifteen minutes later. It was a long way into the village without a car; with Feuilly’s schooldays behind him, he had forgotten just how long it took on foot. He glanced sideways at Bahorel. “You got a death wish or something? Poaching in Thénardier’s wood?”

Feuilly had met Thénardier only briefly in his time working at the filling-station – he had stopped for petrol only once or twice, and even then his visits were brief, aggravated as he seemed to be by Feuilly’s very presence. Nobody, including Feuilly’s father, had ever had a good word to say about him. This in itself was more than telling in a village as small as Clipton.

“Thénardier doesn’t need to know,” Bahorel replied airily. He shot a sideways glance at Feuilly, his eyes mischievous. “You could come with me, perhaps.”

“Me?” Feuilly scoffed. Not likely; his father would wallop him if he ever found out. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Couldn’t even tempt you with an evening walk, perhaps?”

Feuilly turned sideways to look at him. “A walk?” he asked. “You mean, in the dark?”

Bahorel’s smile was practically contagious. “Just a walk. No poaching involved. You’d be surprised how different this place looks at night.”

Apprehension seemed determined to worm its way into Feuilly’s chest; he tried not to let it. It was just a walk. Just a walk in the dark with grocer’s boy, their dreams hanging untouched in the air. Just a walk, and a boy, and the feeling of the unknown buried deep like a knife in his chest. “Sure,” he said. Up ahead of them, the vague outline of the village could be seen; known by daylight, transformed by the night time. “Why not.”

*

Bahorel, Feuilly was quick to learn, had not been wrong about this.

The lane between places was even quieter at night. Feuilly sat down on a nearby fence post, the village proper less than a hundred metres or so away, and raised his head to look up at the spectacular night sky. You’d never see a sky like this in the city, he thought to himself; the horizon was blanketed with stars, shining absently like lanterns – Feuilly counted out constellations as he sat there; Orion, Leo, Cygnus… This world was so much bigger than himself, so much bigger than everything they did…

“You seem like you’re having deep thoughts,” said a voice behind him. “I almost don’t want to interrupt you.”

Feuilly turned to smile at Bahorel, only slightly disappointed to find he had traded in his beetle-crushers for an old pair of trainers. Dressed all in black, he was barely distinguishable from the backdrop of the night – much like Feuilly himself, with his navy blue jumper and dark brown slacks. He pulled the newsboy cap he was wearing a little lower over his face and jumped off the fence post.

“You said no poaching…” he began, “But I get the feeling we’re going to end up in Thénardier’s wood just the same. Am I right?”

Bahorel clasped a hand to his chest. “You do wound me,” he replied, bowing low as he tweaked his own flat cap – less of a Teddy Boy, now, and more of something else – a man made for the night. His kilowatt smile, however, was just the same. “Even if we _don’t_ end up nicking a bird,” he said artfully, “the experience will be worth it. I promise you that. Nothing in the world like taking what isn’t yours.” He cast a daring eye over Feuilly for a moment and then tipped his head skywards. Feuilly wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard words so perfect.

 

_“Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window’s embrasure,_

_Sat the lovers, and whispered together, beholding the moon rise_

_Over the pallid sea, and the silvery mist of the meadows._

_Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,_

_Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.”_

 

Stars stirred in their wake. Somehow, Feuilly remembered what it was to breathe.

“Well,” he said, watching as Bahorel turned and smiled and doffed his cap, “Let’s walk.”

*

“You don’t strike me as the sort to take up being a grocer’s boy,” Feuilly said conversationally, as they made their way along the moonlit track. Everything around them was drenched in the night; shadows nestled beneath the hedges, becoming darkness as it moved behind them, small animals crawling softly in the places in-between. The sky itself was studded with stars; Feuilly could feel every throb of their dull, aching hearts.

The world was alive, more alive than he had ever known it; Feuilly could not put the knowledge down.

Bahorel stretched his arms lazily up towards the sky, intent on capturing the magic. “Didn’t mean to,” he said, as casually as Bahorel said anything. His eyes snapped to Feuilly. “Sai’s my uncle. This is just a way of getting me away from London, I suppose. And the riots. Say, do you like being a mechanic?” he asked suddenly. Feuilly started a little in surprise. Nobody had ever asked him that question before.

“I suppose,” he replied, careful to keep his voice neutral. “I’m good at it – it’s all I’ve ever done. You don’t – you don’t mean Notting Hill, do you?”

Bahorel cracked his knuckles. “Not every Ted wants to be best friends with the WDL,” he told him. He gazed down at his hands, contemplative. “They learned their lesson. But my parents thought I was best out of London – I don’t blame them. Though I still don’t think the whites own Ted culture.” When he looked over at Feuilly, his expression was mixed. “You looked surprised,” he commented. Feuilly looked away to his own hands.

“ _Realmente no._ ” he replied, his cheeks heating slightly. “ _Sólo me alegro._ It’s nice to meet someone else who isn’t quite from around here.” Bahorel let out something of a snort.

“Grantaire mentioned you were bilingual,” he said, a smile dancing at the corners of his lips. “Is that why you live all the way out here? Keeping yourself to yourself?”

“My grandparents moved here years ago,” Feuilly replied. “We still live in their old caravan. It was my dad’s dream to take over the filling-station when he got old enough.”

“But not yours?”

“I like fixing cars,” he replied. “Selling petrol to people isn’t nearly as exciting.”

Bahorel lit up a cigarette. “If you say so,” he said. “As someone who delivers cabbage to elderly women, I feel like I might have a claim to the more boring job, but if you insist.” He put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply. “You know, I ran into Grantaire’s butcher boy yesterday.”

“Enjolras?”

Bahorel tipped his head. “That’s the one. He’s got kind of a thing for him, hasn’t he?”

Feuilly’s back stiffened. “And if he does?” he asked, the question hanging in the air like it had a physical weight of its own. Bahorel took another drag of cigarette, a wearied kind of look on his face. It lasted for only a moment.

“Then all the power to him. Seems as if he hates him though. I wouldn’t fancy his chances.”

Feuilly shrugged. It was all he could do to stop the relief from spilling out of him; a great, sweeping relief, one he hadn’t felt since Grantaire and himself had both exchanged their deepest secrets. “Enjolras is just like that,” he replied with a small smile. “They like to argue with each other.” Bahorel snorted.

“Non-stop?” he asked. The smile crept just a little wider.

“Non-stop,” he confirmed, “Like an old married couple.”

A sudden sound ahead made both of them pause. Bahorel, glancing sideways, took one look at the path ahead before taking Feuilly gently aside, both of them scrambling beneath the gap at the bottom of the hedge on one side of the lane. Crouched on the other side, Bahorel looked across at Feuilly; Feuilly looked back, watching as he raised a finger to his lips.

“Not a sound,” he mouthed, creeping back to the gap in the bush. A silent moment later, Feuilly followed.

Several metres away, his face illumined in the half-dark by a glowing torch, Feuilly could see one of Thénardier’s more unpleasant keepers – Montparnasse, barely older than Feuilly himself, but with a face like iron and a spider-soft footfall to match, a long-legged dog following closely at his heels. He walked down the lane as silently as a ghost. If Thénardier’s woods were dangerous in any real way, it was because of him, Feuilly thought. Between the man himself and the gun he carried, it would be difficult to say who yielded the greater threat. Feuilly had no desire to meet both of them together.

Bahorel watched him pass without comment. Once he seemed sure the lane was empty, he turned to Feuilly and said, “The woods will be almost empty now. Come on.”

“Bahorel!” Feuilly protested. When Bahorel reached out to take his hand, he snatched it back. “You’re insane,” he whispered fiercely. “We can’t just go and _poach_ his pheasants!”

Bahorel threw up his hands. “You don’t have to,” he said genially. The twitch of his lips was unmistakable; Feuilly bit down on his lip to stop himself from smiling back.

Bahorel leaned forward to take his hand again, cupping it carefully between his palms. “Just a walk through the woods?” he said, and his voice was terribly, tragically earnest. “Just to show you what it’s like. You’ve lived here all your life and you’ve never _lived_ a little, Feuilly. Come on. Here’s to a bit of adventure.”

This time, Feuilly let himself be pulled. He couldn’t help it. This Bahorel of the night was more magnetic than anyone he’d ever known.

Thénardier’s woods were secure in all but one respect: on the far west side of the track, almost completely obscured by an overgrown hedge, there was a gap just wide enough for two people in close proximity to pass abreast. Feuilly flinched a little as Bahorel slung an arm around his shoulders, guiding him through the gap – then relaxed, the thorns of the hedgerow barely felt as they made their way through. And, suddenly, they were __in.__

Feuilly looked up at the sky and found that it had completely disappeared, obscured by inky-black trees, branches criss-crossing overhead to form a complete blanket of darkness. The silence, too, was absolute. _Like silence listening to silence_ , he thought, pushing himself a little closer to Bahorel. Bahorel pulled his flat cap a little further over his face.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said in a low voice, “That other bloke is always the last one to leave. I’ve been watching out for them all.”

“But?” asked Feuilly. He sensed one coming.

“But stay close all the same,” Bahorel added, grinning again. Feuilly could barely see him beneath the canopy of darkness – the only light was the small entrance way behind him, bleeding moonlight onto the thick carpet of fallen leaves beneath their feet. When they moved away into the woods proper, they would be entirely in the dark. Feuilly suppressed a shiver.

“This way,” murmured Bahorel, “There’s a clearing up ahead. Won’t be any birds left on the ground, but we might be able to spot a few.”

Feuilly elbowed him gently in the ribs. “I don’t want to steal a bird,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. Bahorel chuckled.

“Fine,” he replied, his words suddenly cut off from the rest of him as they stepped away from the entrance and into the heart of old Thénardier’s wood, blackness leading into blackness. “Just to see.”

The warm, solid weight of Bahorel’s arm moved from Feuilly’s shoulders to hold onto his hand. He did not let go, even when he fumbled in his jacket pocket for a torch. The darkness was instantly thrown into remission, tossed back like a blanket to reveal an unwavering white streak of light. Feuilly squeezed Bahorel’s hand; Bahorel squeezed back.

“OK,” he said in an undertone. “Let’s go.”

There were no keepers here so late at night, Bahorel had said, and Feuilly believed him – but even so, he had a hard time preventing himself from glancing behind each tree. They had only gone half-a-dozen paces before Bahorel’s hand moved from his to clasp him by the shoulder, his baritone voice rumbling away into the darkness. So solid and __real__ , even where he could not be seen. There could be no mistaking this gentle warmth.

“Don’t worry,” Bahorel murmured, “There’s no-one here. Just us and those damn fancy birds.”

Feuilly snorted – then immediately lifted up a hand to cover the sound. Even with no-one around but the birds and the trees, noise carried and there was no guarantee Montparnasse wouldn’t come back in the early hours to check on Thénardier’s wood of his own volition. But he let himself relax – a little bit, if not completely.

The clearing was less than five or so minutes away. Feuilly spotted it almost immediately. A perfect circle of silver moonlight shone down onto the leaf-strewn ground, the trees’ branches thin enough that Bahorel’s torch was no longer necessary. He switched it off with a quiet __click__ and stepped away from Feuilly into the circle of intertwining trees.

“Voilà!” he said proudly, raising a hand to point. “Look, you can see them roosting.”

Feuilly followed somewhat anxiously, uneasy in the clear space. He stretched his neck to look up into the trees’ criss-crossing branches. Secure in the highest boughs, he could see several dark, roundish shapes – pheasants, wings folded and heads tucked into their breasts, more used to food and comfort than Feuilly would ever be. For the first time that night, the consequences of poaching from Thénardier seemed somewhat less dire – but it was too late now, in any case. The pheasants were already roosting. As Bahorel had promised, all Feuilly had to do was watch. He sighed inwardly.

“They look peaceful,” he commented, “Well-fed.”

Bahorel grunted in agreement. “He’ll have the beaters in here soon,” he said, “Chasing them out into the trees for ‘em all to hunt. I’ve a right mind to sneak in one night and steal them all.”

“All of them?” Feuilly echoed. “But there’s too many, surely…” He looked from one tree to another – sleeping pheasant to sleeping pheasant. This part of the woods was far too quiet; Feuilly leaned forward to grab Bahorel by the elbow, holding on tightly. “Can we get out of here?”

Bahorel’s frosty expression vanished, to be replaced by the dandy-ish smile Feuilly already seemed to know so well. He took hold of Feuilly’s hand and switched on the torch.

“Of course,” he said, bowing low, “Allow me.”

*

Stepping out of that silence was a great relief. Feuilly sucked in a breath, relishing the coolness of the night air, free of the scent of heavy leaf fall and the presence of so many sleeping birds. Beside him, Bahorel appeared to be doing the same thing. Feuilly wondered if he missed the sooty London air.

“Have to come back earlier next time,” Bahorel said, that practised smile now firmly back in place. His face had a lot of laugh lines, Feuilly noticed – a face that was worn and warm and kind. And so, suddenly, without thinking, Feuilly kissed him.

He reached up, tracing his fingers across Bahorel’s cheek, and Bahorel reached silently back, his hand skating across Feuilly’s back, face angled towards the kiss, his eyes closed – Feuilly had never imagined something so perfect. For one single, spell-binding moment, he was completely in a world of his own.

An almost imperceptible nudge from Bahorel; Feuilly reluctantly released him, hands still cupped around Bahorel’s unshaven jaw. His heart beat loudly in his chest.

“Let’s go poaching tomorrow,” he said breathlessly, “Just the two of us, together.” He kissed him again, quickly and fiercely. “You can show me how it’s done.”

Bahorel grinned at him. “Hoped you’d change your mind,” he said. He reached out to clasp Feuilly’s hands in his, smiling wider than he ever had before. “If you want, we can take the Buick.”

**Author's Note:**

> Trainers - Sneakers  
> Teddy Boy - See [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Boy) page. Ted subculture emerged roughly at the same time as Greasers.  
> Filling-station - Gas station  
> Torch - Flashlight  
> Lane - Narrow road  
> Petrol - Gas  
> Schoolmaster - School teacher  
> Beetle-crushers - Creepers (shoes)  
> Slacks - Trousers  
> Nicking - To steal
> 
> Bahorel quotes briefly from this poem [here](http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=273), A Tale of Acadie by Longfellow.
> 
> The Notting Hill Riots occurred in 1958 - you can read about them in more detail [here](https://blackpast.org/gah/notting-hill-riots-1958). Essentially, they were racially-motivated attacks carried out by white Teds on Caribbean migrants. The “WDL” that Bahorel mentions is the White Defence League, who purposely (and pretty shamelessly) spurred on the attacks. Needless to say Bahorel was not impressed.


End file.
